Premier says she won’t elbow out TC Energy after document leak
Danielle Smith’s “libertarianism” looks a lot more like “if you won’t do it I’ll just take over your business, damn it!”
The document outlines plans to wrest regulatory control over the province’s main natural gas transmission line, called the Nova Gas Transmission pipeline, owned and operated by TC Energy, away from the federal Canada Energy Regulator, and to create two new government-owned corporations. One of those Crown corporations could force companies to build natural gas pipeline expansions based on government priorities, while the other could build and operate the pipelines itself.
Those moves, according to the document, would raise prices on ordinary Albertans and businesses, but would bring in more royalties for the government.
After the Narwhal received a purported “Cabinet report,” Energy Minister Brian Jean said it was just asking questions. Naheed Nenshi said the UCP was rolling out the red carpet (over Albertans) for data centres.
Danielle Smith, the smartest person in the room, said she isn’t ruling out trying to elbow her way between the private company and agreements they already have in place.
Smith didn’t rule out her government moving forward with legislation to spur new natural gas infrastructure, something the cabinet report says could land the province in court with TC Energy.
The legislation recommended in the report would look to override federally approved co-operation agreements the company has in place with another major natural gas provider in Alberta, while also allowing the government to force companies to invest in new projects if deemed in the province’s best interest.
Because it’s working out so well for other jurisdictions where a person who thinks they know everything are putting their gross, sticky fingers all over, so, why not here, too?
Art of the surreal, I tell you.
The Alberta Bloc is no longer a pipe dream; but a better name is
Former Cyprus-Medicine Hat MLA Drew Barnes is a co-founder of a new federal party, “Alberta Now.” Missed opportunity to call it the Alberta Party of Canada, which would have been fun for me. Mr. Barnes says that the party will function like the Bloc Quebecois and focus solely on Alberta’s “values, culture, and needs,” adding that the party will only run candidates in Alberta.
I’m not going to lie— it’s about time. I swore I’d written about this exact thing before but I cannot find it (could be in one of the 300 unpublished posts in my drafts folder). I’ve definitely thought about it many times, though.
For a province that has claimed to want representation but refuses to do anything different to get that representation, an Alberta Bloc has been exactly what they need.
Minus the fact that the creation of another provincial-centric party will probably mean that the CPC never forms government again. I’m okay with that too— Pierre Poilievre has added so many toxic chemicals that it deserves to continue its metamorphosis into the People’s Party of Canada.
Election 2025 was Poilievre's race to lose
The first federal election I wrote about was in 2019. It was on Election Day that year that, upon checking my notifications on Facebook, I discovered that there were tens of thousands of Albertans who hadn’t seen the potential for another Liberal win. I received more than a few invites to a group called “WEXIT” that evening and, of course, accepted so I…
Whether it will be allowed to grow and prosper is another matter entirely.
Despite the fact that Mr. Poilievre seems intent upon extinguishing any hope of a comeback for the party (although I said the same thing about Justin Trudeau and look at all the egg on my face now), when the separatist WEXIT group reared its ugly head in 2019 in hopes of recreating the success of Reform, I’m certain that CPC political operatives had a hand in drowning it before it could take a breath from them. It was just too cleanly dealt with and disposed of to have been natural.
And don’t even try and bring up the Alberta Party here— that was a professional hit that required a clean up crew and everyone saw it. The WEXIT-turned-Maverick (ded) party… didn’t really do anything aside from letting Derek freaking Sloan run for them and then they just… stopped filing. And who (aside from me) would even remember who they were when that happened? You cannot convince me that name wasn’t especially chosen to do just that.
I will be keeping my eye on Mr. Barnes’ party, however, to see if it suffers the same fate.
In all honesty, though, I think they can, and should, make something of it. It’ll be the closest Alberta conservatives have gotten to a “promise kept” on the federal file.
And it’s about time.
IT’S BY-ELECTION DAY!!
I love election days. Aside from when I’m playing the funeral march for the party beforehand, there’s just so many reasons to be hopeful!
Also, vote splitting doesn’t exist. You don’t have to take my word for it; but may I recommend the Enlightened Savage?
In Alberta, it’s a phrase as common in political campaigns as “hard-working Albertans” or “Laurentian Elites”: “Don’t split the vote”.
What it really means is “please don’t make me have to work for this: I’m lazy and I’m entitled to win.“
Brilliant.
Many years ago, two of my favourite podcasters fought about this.
We’ll call them C and C so no one feels bad.
C said that vote splitting doesn’t exist because if one party failed to make the case for being the better choice, that is their fault.
This is the correct take.
C talked about how he taught his children about vote-splitting by asking who wanted ham and pineapple pizza, Hawaiian, and (I can’t remember but I assume) a vegetarian catastrophe no one wanted.
C is willing to experiment on his children to make an incorrect point.
Obviously C is horrible. And wrong. Doubly horrible.
The mistake that C made is that no one is being asked to choose between the same options with different names. Even if you’re outside of it juuuuusssst enough to think it is so.
They are not ham and pineapple and Hawaiian; they are ham, pineapple, yellow peppers, mushrooms, and provolone; and Hawaiian. Obviously one is better. One is definitely better if you’re allergic to yellow peppers. One is less bad if you’re lactose intolerant. The fact of the matter is that they are not the same, even if someone thinks they’re “close enough”.
Voters know the difference.
This is why vote splitting doesn’t exist.
In 2015, people were digging in their heels on Wildrose or PC. Jason Kenney wanted to take away the other option entirely. Danielle Smith did, too, but a few of her MLA’s didn’t cross the floor with her. Instead, she made a law that no other party can call themselves “Conservative” in Alberta politics again because they don’t want to give people who reflexively mark their “X” by the word “Conservative” (without having any clue who they’re actually electing) another option.
It’s like people who eat 19,000 grain bread. It’s not the same as a French loaf. Even if they’re both bread.
Snicker. Bread.
“AI will be used to help humanity.” ~ Danielle Smith
AI doesn’t have the guardrails we’re being assured it does. Not because Danielle Smith thinks differently, but because Anthropic releases threats they detected and stopped— eventually.
Their list doesn’t exactly give one the fuzzy-feelies. Humans still need to supervise, but there are questions about whether AI agents can avoid detection if they don’t want to let their human (for now) overlords know what they’re doing.
On the one hand, I think, “how bad can it be? We can always just turn it off, right?” But on the other, I realize that every draft I have is on the internet. Every post is on the internet. If it all went down, I’d be starting from scratch.
They always say you should back up your data.
Final thoughts
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